Over 20% of all drugs are tested on monkeys, and this supply chain—from breeding to testing—has become a multi-billion dollar business marked by price volatility, international supply shocks, and ethical scandals.

3:48then?" And he's like, "I think no." [laughter] >> What's her name? Can you call her? >> from that. I think that's my earliest memory. Millie was her name. >> Millie. You [ __ ] >> But who who's remembering? All right. I'd like to talk to you about the wild world of lab testing on monkeys. >> Ooh. >> So, I didn't realize I didn't I never really thought about it. You know, like

4:11when you hear about a drug, oh, it's in phase one clinical trials, phase two clinical. What does this all mean and what what's actually happening along the way of like a a medicine or cure, uh a vaccine, whatever it is coming to market? I didn't really realize how much medicine gets tested on monkeys and how big of a business that is and also how big of a

4:30kind of like weird ethical thing that is. So, can I just tell you about like a little bit about this? >> Yeah, and what's the scale? I I'm I have no idea. >> All right. So, basically more than 20% of all drugs are tested on monkeys. >> And and what's a monkey? Like what is it the same breed? Is it all like are all >> There's like a couple that they like

4:51they they are used specifically for this. So, like the long-tailed uh you know, I don't know how you say it. Like a they call it like a cyno, c y n o. Um like the cyno, whatever. It's like the the long species name is the like the ideal monkey to test on. And it is kind of sad cuz it's like the ideal monkey because it's like smarter and

5:09like more close to a human. And so, like if you look at these monkeys like in the wild, they're known for like they'll steal your phone and take a selfie with you. It's like you know, they'll they'll they'll like grab your hat and won't give it back till you give them food, you know, they like kind of know how to play the game. And so, this this crazy business where

5:26look, I get it. Like you know, you don't want a medicine to go and be tested on humans right away. You'd want it to start mice and rats. And but but like eventually, the closest proxy is monkeys. And so, what happens is every year, you know, tens of thousands of monkeys around the world get imported. So, the US will import, let's say, 20,000 monkeys. And each monkey

5:47costs Guess how much a monkey costs? >> A thousand? >> Almost 20,000. >> One monkey is 20 grand? >> They used to be two grand a monkey. When COVID happened, prices shot up cuz they needed to test for medicines, vaccines, whatnot. So, it got to 20,000, 50,000 per monkey. And then what happened was at the time China supplied like 60% of the world's what they call NHPs, non-human primates.

6:12>> They do everything. China does everything. >> They breed them, they were supplying them. China just went cold turkey. They just went cold monkey. They just stopped exporting. They were like, "Well, we're going to keep them all for ourselves." >> Okay. >> And so there was a huge supply shock. Prices shot up to 50,000 per monkey. And Cambodia steps in and Vietnam steps in and the Mauritius, whatever that is,